If you happen to watch business news networks such as Bloomberg, CNBC, Fox, to name just a few, you'd better take their gurus' analyses with a grain of salt especially when it comes to China's economy. I am not saying that the Western experts on your screen necessarily have an ax to grind. I am just saying that, more often than not, Western economic theories don't apply to China. It would be a grave mistake, in my humble opinion, to sinicize what you have learned about economics from your US college. Harvard Business Review may not make much sense of China's business world.

Take Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for an example. Informed Chinese living in China understand that GDP exists for one reason and one reason only: politics. For Beijing, economy is economic politics. In other words, economics is a political tool serving the powers that be.

Another example is One Belt One Road, which the Western media genuinely believe is a big deal to symbolize and substantiate China's prowess as a global player. But for Beijing, the Belt Road project is too much debt-burdened to go on. China's economic growth is debt growth. So are the Belt Road countries'. All signs indicate that Beijing has to slow down on debt growth. That means the Belt Road countries' economies will be shrinking, if not collapsing, as Beijing is turning off its money spigot. I haven't even mentioned that the US Navy, if needed, could grasp all the choke points on China's sea trade routes around the globe.

This is the world's second largest economy with Chinese characteristics. Get used to it.

Author: Lingyang Jiang

Image: Google